


in nasturtium & bishop’s lace

by stfalls



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Fluff, ISH!, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn, allison is Pining, and angst obviously, background Renison - Freeform, because andrew is a secret sap, communicating via flowers, growth (not just the flowers), its v wholesome up here, kevin has a bookstore, neil and andrew are competing florists in the same town, neil makes awful (amazing) fashion choices, sir & king cause a lot of trouble, the lads learning to heal! and let people in! and accept help!, yes u heard me right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-10-24 05:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stfalls/pseuds/stfalls
Summary: He runs his fingers over the blooms; the Marigolds and Baby’s Breath and Bishop’s Lace, the Anemones and Carnations—and for the first time in his life, Neil feels safe. Feels like he’s finally found himself somewhere to call home.or, Neil Josten buys an apartment and a flower shop and a cat to force himself to stop running, only the cat in question keeps scurrying off to the shop over the road and forcing him to interact with it’s infuriating owner.





	1. now i have nothing to say

**Author's Note:**

> this is by far the most self-indulgent thing i have ever written & this first chapter is short but if i don’t post it now i never will! warnings for panic attacks and general angst, u know how it is. 
> 
> nasturtium means victory in battle & bishop’s lace means healing and labour of love, baby! this fic is all about the healing and love kids strap in it’s wholesome hours

There aren’t a lot of things that Neil can say he knows for certain. 

He knows that he’s scarred, that his skin gets tight and sore when he forgets to moisturize it. Knows that he doesn’t have time for organisation, that his hair and his apartment and the shop are all a giant mess. Neil knows more flower and plant names that he can count, knows what customers really want when they say _something pretty_, knows how to convey any emotion with a bouquet, even when it’s something as specific as _I’m sorry I hit your dog with my car, I promise I’ll pay the vet’s bills_. He knows that he still can’t look in the mirror most days, definitely never at his face, that he’s fluent in both German and French, and knows just enough Spanish to get by. 

Sometimes he can’t help but obsess over the fact that there’s not really much about him to know at all. He tries not to think about it, because it makes his head hurt and his scars ache, but Neil Josten is only made of a handful of things. When, he wonders, will he know enough about himself to feel like a real person?

Thinking of things he likes is easier, even though he knows they don’t really count; he likes his shop and his plants and his customers. He likes tea and his collection of teacups, likes his friends and Sir and the cat that definitely isn’t his but likes to curl up on his counter and his bed like she belongs there anyway. Likes the books Kevin brings him on herbs and cats, likes his dungarees and the shapes Allison paints on his nails. He likes his well-weathered, heavy-duty boots with the frogs on them and their alternating laces, likes the woolen hat he has that says _baby_ across the front in cursive glitter even though every other person in his life thinks it’s an abomination. 

On bad days, Neil likes to paint. It’s easy. A way to zone out but still be productive—because nobody seems to appreciate it when he spends a whole day sat on the shop floor staring at the Queen Anne’s Lace, reliving every positive and negative interaction he’s ever had, trying to decide which ones directly contribute to who he is as a person. 

“Neil, babe,” Allison says, sticking her head through the door. The fact that Neil didn’t hear her open the giant heavy door at the bottom of the stairs, or her noisy heels on the way up, or the opening of the door to his apartment, isn’t a good sign, but one he’s going to ignore. If Allison will let him. The arch of her eyebrow says he’s probably not going to get away with it, though that might be more to do with the mess of paint and tea cups he’s managed to spread across every free surface of his apartment. “That guy is here with Sir again.”

“Oh,” Neil says. Is it that time already? Last time he checked, it was just past noon. “Right.”

He wipes his paint covered hands on the legs of his second-favourite pair of dungarees (the ones with the multi-coloured cartoon dinosaurs all over them, a gift from Matt) and picks his way across the floor to scoop a displeased, dozing King from the foot of his bed. “Sorry, baby,” he tells her as she turns her head away from him. “I promise I’ll give you more cucumber if you come back tomorrow, okay?”

She murps at him unhappily but doesn’t try to escape. Neil’s going to count it as a victory. 

What he _isn’t_ going to count as a victory is Andrew Minyard, stood in the middle of the shop with his arms crossed over his chest, scowling down at a yowling Sir. Andrew is clad in all black, like always, from his battered Converse to his armbands. Neil takes satisfaction in the way Sir’s winding herself around his legs in a bid for attention, plastering white hairs all around the ankles of Andrew’s tight jeans like badly made fur cuffs. 

“Here,” Neil says, passing King over just as Sir switches strategy and decides that yelling from the counter is a much more effective way to demand attention. Neil has lived through a lot, has endured injuries that should have killed him for sure, but he’s helpless to try and survive that hideous noise. He knows it’s just encouraging her to be more of an evil little gremlin, but he still rubs along Sir’s belly when she flops down like the giant lump she is and can’t help the way his face twitches into a smile when she purrs at him in thanks. 

“Traitorous Bastard,” he tells her fondly, and then, to Andrew: “King’s decided avocado is the worst food on the face of the planet.”

Andrew’s eyebrow twitching minutely upwards is the only sign that he might find this revelation even slightly interesting. The rest of his face stays completely stagnant, a blank, unimpressed expression that makes Neil want to prod and poke and push until it cracks. He’s managed it a few times, making Andrew so angry that he turns around and leaves, but so far no great show of emotion has been revealed. Neil knows it’s not a smart move, not if what Allison has said about him is true, but he can't bring himself to care how dangerous Andrew supposedly is. He’s never been very good at heeding warning signs. 

“Is that a breadstick,” Andrew says, voice flat as ever, effectively cutting off Neil’s comments about botox and the downsides of plastic surgery before he can even open his mouth. 

“Uh. What?”

Andrew doesn’t repeat himself, just stares at some point to the side of Neil’s head like it’s personally offending him. Neil reaches his hand up on instinct, thinking he’s going to find a particularly unruly mat of curls that refuses to be tamed, but is instead met with the half-eaten breadstick he’d tucked behind his ear earlier for safekeeping and then proceeded to forget about. 

At least, he _thinks_ that’s what happened. There’s not really any other explanation as to why there’d be half a breadstick nestled behind his ear, but Neil can’t remember ever putting it there. He vaguely remembers deciding to eat something earlier, when King came crashing into his room and woke him up, but the actual eating and getting out of bed and the commencement of the painting that he knows he’s been doing all afternoon is all one big blur of _nothing_. It’s like reeling through a camera roll so fast that all you catch is a few, half-formed ideas of what you’re looking at, just enough to know what the photos are supposed to be without ever actually seeing them clearly. 

_Shit_, he thinks, and though it’s distant, the panic is definitely there. _Shit, shit, shit_.

This is the kind of thing that would get him killed on the run, this is something his mother would never had stood for. He’s lost an entire day to _what?_ His own head? A few terrible brushstrokes on paper that he can’t even recollect? He’s been stupid, been utterly idiotic. His brain has clearly decided he’s safe here, safe enough to fucking disappear on him for entire hours on end, and no matter how many times Neil tries to convince himself of it, the fact is that he’ll never be safe. Not anywhere. Certainly not _here_, in this almost-life that he’s somehow carved for himself, not in his cluttered apartment with his needy cat, not in this shop with his flowers and his customers and the people he begrudgingly calls his friends. He’s just a sitting duck, just waiting, making it oh so easy for anyone to find him. His father might be dead, his mother might still be ashes and a pile of bones hidden in Californian sand, but Lola’s still alive, there’s still the whole fucking Wesininski empire who won’t stop until they see Junior’s blood, until he’s payed for his mistakes, until he’s—

“Neil,” a voice says. He knows it’s not his mother nor his father, but he still can’t help the full-bodied flinch at the sight of hands coming towards him. 

The hands still, freeze mid-air, then retreat again, slowly, like any fast movement might send him running. It’s not far from the truth, but Neil’s trying really hard not to think about getting up and leaving, about the slap of his shoes against the pavement and a duffle bag banging against his hip, tries not to think about how easy it would be to leave this life behind, because if he thinks about it he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop himself from going through with it. Instead, he tracks the retreating hands with his eyes, up, up, up until he’s met with an unmoving wall of black. 

The unmoving wall of black moves, just a little, and it’s only then that Neil realises its _Andrew_. It’s Andrew, crouched down in front of him, hands tucked against his stomach like he wants Neil to know they won’t come anywhere near him again. His face is it’s usual concrete slate, but for once Neil finds it more grounding that infuriating. 

Neil takes a breath, and then another, and another after that. He does the counting exercises Matt had told him about. He thinks about the things he can see, hear, smell and touch. He wonders how, exactly, he will ever survive his father’s men when he can’t even think about a breadstick without having a panic attack. 

“I’m fine,” Neil says, because Andrew’s still crouched in front of him, just _looking_—as if Neil might split into a thousand tiny pieces if he turns away. He forces himself to drop his knees from his chest, uncurls himself even though he just wants to ball up tighter and never move from this corner he’s squeezed himself into ever again. 

Andrew looks unimpressed. “Fine,” he repeats slowly, like he thinks Neil doesn’t quite understand the meaning of the word. 

“Yes, Andrew,” Neil snaps, annoyed, mood changing in an instant. He doesn’t need Andrew’s help, doesn’t need his concern. Neil Josten may not know much about himself, but he does know that help is not something to be accepted. It’s a lesson he learned long ago, first by his mistakes and then by his mother’s hands—relying on others will get him killed. Neil’s already broken a thousand of the promises he made to his mother, he’s not about to break another, not if he can help it. “Fine.”

He wants to tell Andrew to fuck off, to leave and never come back, but he manages to hold his tongue. Andrew must see it on his face, though; it only takes him a few seconds to stand up, collect his cat from the Petunias she’s hidden herself behind and stalk out of the shop like he was never there in the first place. 

The bell jingles loudly from above the door, and Neil gives himself twenty seconds to get himself together before he goes upstairs and faces Allison, who is no doubt cleaning his entire apartment. His hands are shaking and he has a headache, but Neil has survived worse. He heaves a few desperate breaths, fists pressed against his eyelids, the mantra of _i’m fine i’m fine i’m fine_ swirling round his head. 

By the end of the twenty seconds, he almost believes himself.


	2. i’m sick of meaning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kevin i love u i promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wanna say thanks to flo for bein an angel n reading all my shitty drafts & to everyone else who commented or sent asks or waited fifty years for this chapter n special big thanks to my brain for producing some brain cells finally :)

“You’re almost at the end,” Renee says, leaning her hip against the counter. Her mouth is flat but her eyes are smiling, and Andrew knows that she’s inordinately pleased with how ominous she sounds. 

Andrew doesn’t answer, because this isn’t a question, but he does slide the crumpled receipt he’s been using as a bookmark back between the pages, pretending that he’s been interrupted. 

Not that Renee believes him. _I know exactly what you’re doing, _says the upwards tilt to her mouth. _You aren’t fooling anyone. _

She’s right, of course, but the aim is more distraction than foolery. He doesn’t want to talk about this, doesn’t want to have to endure another half-lilt conversation about _healing _and _progress _and _you have to finish a book eventually, you know_. 

Renee purses her lips. Andrew pushes his book off the counter and onto the floor. The thud makes the cat jump from somewhere in the back—Andrew feels the hairs stand up on the back of his neck before he even hears King’s dissatisfied yowl—and come skittering out, feet slipping against the smooth surface of the tiles. She winds her way around the bottom of his stool, mouthing at the rubber tips of his converse, and if they were alone he’d apologise. 

Instead, he watches her get more and more wound up at the lack of attention. She claws at the hems of his pant legs, and when that doesn’t work: “Mrrp.”

Andrew sighs, long-suffering, bends down to scratch along her back. He scoops her up and dumps her on the counter so that she can claw her way up to sit on his shoulders and nibble at his hair. 

Renee toes at Andrew’s discarded book with one of her sensible shoes. “I brought you another. It’s a crime novel Kevin recommended to me.”

She slants him a sideways look, and Andrew knows she’s going to let this go, for now. In return, Andrew stifles the face he’s desperate to make at the mention of Kevin and books in the same sentence. Renee smiles like she knows this, and then says, voice light, “Are you coming to the book club tomorrow? Kevin’s made cupcakes.”

“I don’t know,” Andrew tells her. The cat nyam-nyam-nyams at his hair. “I haven’t finished the book yet.”

Renee’s face smiles like it’s trying not to laugh. “Oh, I see. Would you like me to tell you how it ends?”

Andrew knows how it ends. It ends in death. It ends the way the author said it wouldn’t. You can’t tell someone over and over that they’re going to survive and expect the world to listen, can’t expect that a few words on paper will do anything but seal their fate. It’s foolish, Andrew thinks, to hope for something and not realise that the hoping is what stops you from getting it. 

It’s the furthest he’s gotten in a book in months. 

Years, even. 

His tattered, second-hand copy of _The Hour of the Star _sits upstairs on his bedside table, or shoved carelessly under his pillow. In the depths of night, sometimes, when sleep seems like a made-up thing, he thinks about reading the last few pages. Andrew has read the words _for there is a painful side to a surfeit of happiness _so many times that the paper is warped, ink blurred by the press of his fingers against the page. 

“Ten pages,” he thinks to himself, on those sleepless nights. “It’s only ten more pages, and I already know how it ends.”

But knowing and acting are two very different things, no matter how many times the book tells him, _to think is an act_. 

The problem with reading is that there are too many authors that can reach into his brain and prod around with sticky fingers until they find a way to rearrange his feelings into words on paper, sharp and tinted like stained glass. The problem with reading is that Kevin is very talented at hunting these authors down. 

Needless to say, Andrew hates Kevin. 

“Neil’s coming,” Renee says sweetly, neatly changing the subject, though not by much. “Allison told me.”

Andrew tuts. “I do not want to hear about your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Andrew. We’re just friends.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at her bright red cheeks and says nothing. Allison comes into the shop whenever Renee is working, making up increasingly stupid reasons for doing so. Sometimes she stays for hours, which Andrew can’t help but think is poor staff management on Neil’s part, considering she’s always stopping by during her shifts. The only reason Andrew doesn’t bar her is because sometimes she brings pastries from the tiny bakery on fifth, the ones with the butter icing and cream insides—though the way Renee is rendered speechless and stammering is pretty entertaining, too, considering she could hold a conversation with a broom-handle without so much as blinking—but ultimately, it's the promise of baked goods that makes her presence tolerable. Most of the time. 

Renee’s cheeks are very, very red. 

King gets bored of trying to destroy Andrew’s hair and decides she’d rather claw at Renee’s pressed pink skirt instead, and Andrew uses his newly gained freedom to go out the back and make coffee. The kitchenette is tiny, coated in decade old chipped blue paint and paper; notes and forms and smiley faces all stuck to the walls like terrible papier-mâché. 

Andrew switches the coffee machine on and moves out of sight of the doorway, only half a step from being pressed up against a duck-egg wall. He leans his forehead against the decrepit wall-cabinet above the draining board. The coffee machine gurgles. 

_Fuck, _he thinks, eyes closed. _Fuck, fuck, fuck. _

He wants to go back out there and press for answers. He wants to rip all the pages out of his book and throw them in Renee’s face. He wants to go upstairs and crawl into bed and not come out again until this stone that’s settled in his stomach removes itself. Andrew Minyard doesn’t want anything, but in this moment he wants everything. 

He hasn’t seen Neil in over a week. Almost two. 

It’s not the lack of Neil that’s the problem—his absence is but a mere blip in Andrew’s carefully mapped out routine—the problem is the _presence _of Neil, the way Neil takes up so much space by taking so little. The last time Andrew had seen him, he’d had dark bruises under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He’d been wearing a black hoodie and pink pajama bottoms and a pair of white socks. He hadn’t been wearing dungarees in an assaulting colour and pattern, or his heavy-duty frog-print boots, or that shirt with the orange and green cats, or his neon beanie with cursive writing across the headband.

It had been raining, and Andrew had gone out for a cigarette, and Neil had just been standing there, across the street. His hands were shoved into his armpits and his shoulders tucked up under his chin, hunched over himself against the cold. Andrew had lit his cigarette. Neil had stared. And stared, and stared, and stared, eyes dark with shadow from the broken street light, until Matt had emerged from inside the shop and snapped him out of it. He’d ruffled Neil’s hair and said something that sounded like, _I think you need to get some more sleep, bud_, before herding Neil back inside.

Andrew had stared at the empty space he left behind for a long time. 

The time Andrew had seen him before that, Neil was having a panic attack over a fucking breadstick. 

The problem isn’t even the seeing-of-Neil. The problem is Andrew’s brain. Most people, when they notice something, think about it for a while before the thing gets lost in a sea of other shit to think about. Andrew noticed Neil once, fleetingly, months ago, and now he can’t _stop _seeing him. Can’t stop thinking about how and when and what and where. Over and over and over, his brain is a film reel of idiotic jabs and bait he nearly always rises to and messy red hair. 

The coffee machine stops gurgling. Andrew takes a breath in, a breath out, another one in, the way Bee always jabbers on about. He takes two faded mugs from the cupboard, scoops three heaps of cocoa powder and another heap of sugar into his, presses a sweetner into Renee’s, pours out the coffee, adds a lot and a little bit of milk, respectively. 

The bell over the shop door rings, cold air rushing in, and Andrew hears rather than sees Renee’s welcoming smile. Grins that warm come with warning sirens. 

Andrew takes a mug in each hand and carries them out, even though he’d much rather take one step out the back door and just keep walking and walking and walking. _For fuck’s sake, _Andrew thinks, and this time its not scuffed knuckles and paint smeared wrists that cause it. It’s not Neil. 

“Last time I checked, this wasn’t a couples retreat.”

Seth gives Andrew the finger like the child he is, eyeing the coffees Andrew dumps down on the counter like he’s been personally victimised by the fact that neither of them are for him. Kevin and Renee are both leant over a notepad at the end of the counter, Kevin scribbling into it with his scrawling handwriting, crossing out and adding in and doodling little boxes with bookshelves haphazardly stacked tall inside. 

Andrew sits on his stool behind the till, tucked into the opposite corner to Renee and Kevin. It’s a slow day, so slow he could probably get away with closing up early, if all these people weren’t relying on him to get paid. Wednesdays are always quiet, but this relentless rain they’ve been having doesn’t help. He’s not worried; either they’ll make enough money to stay afloat or they won’t. This was never meant to be permanent, anyway. 

“Thought of a name yet?” Kevin asks around his pen lid. Andrew gives him a flat look, but Kevin is too busy pretending that he didn’t say anything, eyes glued to his notebook. Renee smiles at them both, serene and almost gleeful. Traitor.

Andrew hums. His coffee burns every single taste-bud on his tongue. “I think you’re getting your French confused with English again.”

“Andrew,” Kevin says, because he’s incapable of feigning apathy for more than twenty seconds, “It only has to be something simple. Easy. Like—I don’t know. What about _Andrew’s Blooms?”_

“I’ll order the signs right away!”

“I’m just trying to help you, you know. You can’t expect to have a successful business without a name. How are people ever supposed to find you?”

Andrew takes another sip of his coffee. He didn’t think his tongue could get any more burnt, but apparently he was severely mistaken. This revelation is way more entertaining than the conversation they’ve had enough times that Andrew is convinced they could convey the same principles without even opening their mouths. Kevin’s obsessed with naming things that do not need to be named. Andrew, who spent half of his life a _Doe, _doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. You can call a peach an apple all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s still a peach. 

“You all seem to manage.” 

“I’m being serious, Andrew. Everyone’s calling you _Not-Bird’s-Nest. _It’s dreadful. Surely you can’t be happy being known as the invert of the worst shop name to ever exist. I don’t know what Neil was thinking, it’s such a ridiculous thing to call a business—“

Andrew is so very tired. 

He’s not going to name his shop. He’s not—he’s not _Neil. _He can’t just get up one day and think _I’m going to name my store Bird’s Nest_—which is another word for Bishop’s Lace, or Wild Carrot or Queen Anne’s Lace or Bullwort—the tiny white flowers that stand for things like _love _and _hope _and _healing. _Andrew doesn’t understand how Neil can bare his chest above the door like honesty isn’t a merciless killer. How does Neil, with all his scars and sharp edges and words like knives, not see that naming something _healing _is asking for it to be destroyed?

Kevin doesn’t see that, though. He speaks many languages, but not one of them is flower. It’s a good thing, Andrew thinks, because if he knew the meaning behind it, Kevin would get that awful just-been-kicked expression that his face sometimes wears, mouth tight and eyes wide like he’s trying not to cry. 

Seth’s scabbed knuckles appear in front of Andrew’s face, close enough Andrew can feel the heat coming off them. Seth radiates heat at the same rate he burns through words; like paper in a bonfire. Andrew glares at it until it disappears, and then at Seth’s smug face, and then at Kevin’s frown when he says, “Andrew, you’re not even listening.”

Andrew isn’t. If they hadn’t had this conversation eighteen times in the last week alone, he might have the will to have it again. He knows this is Kevin’s stilted, awkward way of showing he cares—trying to a point of fault, it’s just. It’s just that Andrew doesn’t want to think about naming the shop. He doesn’t want to think about his name above the door. Doesn’t want to think about this being a home, this being permanent, this being anything more than a pit stop in the slow race that is learning how to do more than just survive. 

(Andrew doesn’t want to think about how everything he ever wants always gets ripped out from underneath him the second he tries to pin it down)

Seth gives him a look that’s either reprimanding or sympathetic. Kevin’s face is it’s usual mix of angry-sad-defiant. Renee smiles like she can read what Andrew’s thinking. 

Andrew is so, so fucking tired. 

He pushes back from the counter, gets up. Thinks maybe that crash is the sound of his stool falling over, but he doesn’t look back to check. The cat snakes her way around his ankles in an attempt to ground him in every sense of the word, and when Andrew opens the door at the bottom of the stairs to his apartment she shoots up them like someone’s going to stop her. 

The blue-green-blue kitchenette closes in on him, paint just as chipped as Andrew’s insides, and before he ups the stairs Andrew thinks, _we have to paint this fucking monstrosity. _

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Kevin calls after him. Andrew lets the door slam shut behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dunno if its just me but does andrew seem kinda tired to u guys?

**Author's Note:**

> come jab me on tumblr @raveneil


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